Various types of microphones have been used through the years. In these devices, different electrical components are housed together within a housing or assembly. For example, a microphone typically includes a diaphragm and a back plate (among other components) and these components are disposed together within a housing. Other types of acoustic devices such as receivers may include other types of components.
After the signal from the MEMS components is obtained, other processing is sometimes performed. For example, noise shaping is typically performed on the signal received from the MEMS components.
Current MEMS microphones are also coupled to other applications such as those associated with a personal computer or cellular phone. In order to interface with these applications, certain performance standards need to be met. In one example and with respect to the noise shaping that occurs, outputs from the processing with a fourth order noise shaping component have to be made compliant with existing chipsets and codecs. Unfortunately, in previous systems this has meant that some frequencies in the microphone signal (e.g., ultrasonic frequencies) are seriously corrupted by noise.
One previous way of combating this problem was to increase the clock frequency. However, this approach has proved unsatisfactory because it increased the current consumption of the system to an unacceptable level and potentially reduced the audio performance of the system.
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